Frontline documentary on Rwandan genocide...

[carpe diem]

on PBS right now w/ commentary from various Clinton administration officials.

[SharonAnn]

1. Thanks for posting this. I would've missed it! Just turned it on.

Looks good.

[silverchair]

2. this story deeply saddened me

how could the US not intervene in such a crisis? seems as if something is not in our political interest, we just sit on the sidelines and do nothing.

[carpe diem]

3. no oil in Rwanda...

so why should we care...

[Adelante]

4. Have you read?

Samantha Power's book on genocide? She says Wes Clark was one of the very, very few in government who tried to get something done to help in Rwanda. I remember seeing him on an interview where he held up a book with photos of the victims and he was almost crying. He was saying how can we not use our military to do good when we can? When Kosovo looked like it could be a repeat, he said he had Rwanda in his mind and how we had failed all those poor people, when he pushed as hard as he did to save the Kosovar-Albanians.

[Adelante]

5. Here's what I was thinking of yesterday

"Lieutenant General Wesley Clark... was the director of strategic plans and policy for the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon. On learning of the crash, Clark remembers, staff officers asked, "Is it Hutu and Tutsi or Tutu and Hutsi?" He frantically telephoned around the Pengagon for insight into the ethnic dimension of events in Rwanda. Unfortunately, Rwanda had never been of more than marginal concern to Washington's most influential planners." (P. 330)

"Lietenant General Wesley Clark looked to the White House for leadership. "The Pentagon is always going to be the last to want intervene," he says. "It is up to civilians to tell us they want to do something and we'll figure out how to do it." But with no powerful personalities or high-ranking officials arguing for meaningful action, midlevel Pentagon officials held sway, vetoing or stalling on heistant proposals put forward by midlevel State Department and NSC officials... The deck was stacked against Rwandans, who were hiding wherever they could and praying for rescue." (P. 373)

from Samantha Power's "A Problem from Hell"